Blog Archives

It’s been over a week since I blogged — lots of things have been going on. Traveling. Writing. Moving my younger daughter into my oldest daughter’s bedroom. I finally have a breather to write this blog.

There are plenty of recaps of Thrillerfest on the Internet, I don’t need to rehash it. Suffice it to say it’s my favorite conference for a lot of reasons. Though expensive (it’s in NYC), they have a plethora of panels and workshops for readers and authors of all levels. They have cocktail parties each night, an amazing banquet, and it’s an opportunity for me to sit down with my editor and agent in person, a rarity for authors who live on the West Coast.

THANK YOU to Face in a Book in El Dorado Hills for helping launch NOTORIOUS. And a special thanks to my friend Brenda Novak who co-signed with me. Her newest book in her Whiskey Creek series COME HOME TO ME (set in California’s Gold Country) came out the same day!

We had a fabulous turnout, and I greatly appreciate all the support from my friends and readers who came — including those who drove all the way from Napa! I was so humbled and thrilled to talk about Max Revere and meet so many of my readers.

My husband took this fabulous picture of the display in the store:

Face in a Book store display, including a laminated copy of the Sacramento Bee article that ran on Sunday!

But as I’ve been thinking about the direction of Murder She Writes, I can’t help but think to do this right, I should have a loose idea of what I want to accomplish.

1) Nurture and grow the community that is already here.
2) Write blogs that interest both me and my readers.
3) Provide a forum to talk about things that interest me and my readers.

I have a few interviews scheduled with fun and exciting authors; I will of course talk weekly about television or movies. But I want to know: are you interested in a weekly blog about writing? For example, I have a partial draft of a blog about character motivation. I was too tired to finish it now, but plan to post it later this week or early next week. Is this something you’d like to see more of?

What about excerpts? Complete short stories? My misadventures as a mother of five? Interviews with authors? Industry folks (agents/editors)?

I suppose I’m looking for guidance. Of course I’m not going to blog about anything I don’t want to … I’m 44. While I’m not as old as my grandmother was when she died–where she was old enough to say whatever she wanted to whoever she wanted!–I’m getting to the point where I really just want to do what I want to do … which is playing with my kids and writing. 🙂 But I like blogging, and I like talking. So what do you want me to write about? If it’s something I’m even remotely interested in, I’ll blog about it 🙂

On another note … get prepared for May! I’m donating a lunch to Brenda Novak’s Diabetes Auction. Meaning — if you’re going to be at Thrillerfest in NYC or RWA in San Antonio, you can (and should!) bid on a lunch with me. You get to bring 3 friends! There will be fun, and there will be free books, and there will be drinking 🙂 The auction runs the entire month of May, and it’s for a very good cause.

So. Tell me what you want to know, now or in the future. I’m an open book 🙂

The only thing more thrilling than writing about kick-ass action characters is getting a chance to meet them in real life.

During a recent tour of the LAPD Police Academy I had a chance to not only interview some of LA’s finest, but actually participate in some of their more exciting training activities. The tour–which was organized by Romance Writers of America’s mystery and suspense writers’ group–including back-to-back activities at the LAPD Police Academy in Elysian Park (remember the opening from Charlie’s Angels?) and the Davis training facility in the San Fernando Valley. Besides meeting some of LA’s most highly trained cops, we also took part in hands-on demonstrations and a terror-inducing ride at the driving track.

It was a day I’ll never forget and I thought you might enjoy the pictures.

As an animal lover, I got a special kick out of meeting several officers in LAPD’s mounted patrol unit, plus their furry sidekicks. I was surprised to learn that LAPD has so many horses on staff, but evidently these guys (all geldings, it turns out) are great for crowd control at large outdoor events. They also happen to be a favorite among foreign tourists at Venice Beach.

Sage and her handler.

We also met some members of the canine unit, including Sage, a bloodhound that is used to track bad guys who have fled crime scenes.

After finishing up with the four-legged cops, I was honored to meet the only female member of LAPD’s elite SWAT team. This officer told us about the rigors of SWAT training and showed us the armored vehicle they use, along with some of their weapons. I was tremendously impressed by this pioneering woman. Lead-lined clothes are not for the feint of heart.

The thrills continued in the afternoon at the Davis facility, where I got to see a firearms demonstration and check out the EVOC, or Emergency Vehicle Operations Course. I piled into a car with fellow suspense writers Brenda Novak and A.J. Brower, plus a highly trained driving instructor. We strapped ourselves in for a white-knuckled ride around the twists and turns of the driving course. When my heart finally started beating again, they ushered us into an indoor facility to show us the new simulators where officers practice high-speed chases in urban environments.

We capped off our tour in the room where they teach officers how to use “less lethals,” such as Tasers and batons. Brenda Novak and I eagerly volunteered to participate in a “shoot or no-shoot” exercise and were given mock pistols. Despite putting on our best game faces, we were promptly gunned down by bank robbers before we even managed to draw our weapons. A dramatic end to a dramatic day.

Please give MSW guest author Brenda Novak a round of applause! (Sorry I’m late today, I completely spaced last night because I wasn’t on-line while I read page-proofs.)

I’ve known Brenda for nearly 20 years. On New Years Eve in 1992, I was at Brenda’s house for a party with my then-fiance Dan (now my husband) and mutual friends. Fast-forward 13 years and I met Brenda through our local RWA chapter, the Sacramento Valley Rose, at my first meeting in January of 2003. She didn’t remember me, but I definitely remembered her! She was speaking on the panel, and I was hooked on RWA from then on. Brenda and I both have five children (though all but one of hers is older than mine) and we’re both college drop-outs. 🙂 Brenda has three novels this fall–WHITE HEAT (out now), BODY HEAT (just released Aug 31) & KILLER HEAT (on sale Sept 28.) She also runs an annual on-line auction for diabetes research every May through her website. To date, she’s raised over $1 million! She has so much energy and drive she makes me tired, and that’s a feat!

Brenda is giving away TWO copies of the first book in her current trilogy WHITE HEAT. (Yeah!) So ask her anything, or share your own story about how you overcame a personal or professional set-back.

Lately when I blog I’ve been answering the questions I’m asked most often as a writer. One of the most popular–if not THE most popular–is: How did you get published?

It’s difficult to break into the fiction market. Almost everybody I’ve ever met wants to write a book. Not everyone does, of course, but there are enough who do to create a very crowded marketplace. As a result, getting published–and getting published well; there is a different–has a lot to do with building credibility and setting yourself apart from the pack. Because I was “just” a housewife and mother of five, who didn’t even have a college degree (I left a full-ride academic scholarship to marry and start a family at twenty), I knew I needed to do something to give the editors in New York a reason to pull my manucript out of the slush pile. I did that by entering writing contests.

Thankfully, I placed in 90% of the contests I entered, including the Golden Heart, a national contest sponsored by Romance Writers of America. Once I had a nice long list, I felt as if I had some credentials I could put in my query letter that might get me some attention.

I didn’t want to approach editors without an agent, however. Editors use agents as a sifting device, and I wanted to avail myself of every possible advantage. So I started by querying agents. I received several form-letter rejections, as well as some less formal and more encouraging responses. Then an agent named Pamela Ahearn from Louisiana wrote to tell me that she liked what she’ d seen of my work. She asked me to send her the rest of the manuscript–and a few months later offered to represent me.

It took Pam almost a year to sell OF NOBLE BIRTH. I was rejected by St. Martin’s Press, Kensington Books, Avon Books, Bantam and probably a couple of others I can no longer recall before HarperCollins offered me a contract. It was August 26, 1998 when I got THE CALL, and I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited about anything (except maybe hitting The New York Times on June 16, 2008, almost ten years later). My editor was Robin Stamm, a young but eager junior editor working with Laura Cifelli, and I loved her.

Fortunately, HarperCollins liked the title of my book well enough to let me keep it. They gave me a beautiful cover and a release date of November 1999, and I thought I was all set for my new career in publishing. But before my book ever reached a bookstore, HarperCollins bought Avon and let all their romance editors go. This meant that I was “orphaned.”

My career could’ve ended right there. I was a fledging writer, my first book still in production, and I had no advocate at the house. Robin had already read my next two manuscripts, which were historical romances like OF NOBLE BIRTH, and liked them. Before leaving on vacation, she told me that we’d go to contract when she returned, but she was let go right afterward so the contracts never materialized. Being so new and untried, I wasn’t particularly high up on the list of authors HarperCollins was eager to retain–so they cut me loose, too.

It was a setback that could’ve been devastating, except for one thing. I’d gone to a small regional conference in Park City, Utah just a few months before, where I’d met an editor from Harlequin by the name of Paula Eykelhof. Although I’d never dreamed I’d write a contemporary romance, I decided to pitch to her simply because I had the opportunity.

I look back on that day now and wonder what possessed me to do such a thing when I was so sure I had my historical career on track, but I’m definitely glad I did. I liked Paula so well I went home and wrote a proposal to submit to her–a proposal she eventually bought. That book came out in February 2000, and we’ve done 36 books together since, including the Department 6 trilogy coming out now–WHITE HEAT, BODY HEAT and KILLER HEAT.

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Bio:

Allison Brennan

Allison Brennan is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of nearly three dozen romantic thrillers and mysteries, including the Lucy Kincaid series and the Max Revere series. She lives in Northern California with her husband, five children, and assorted pets.